Chapter 23
All The Obvious Stuff in One Chapter
Brioni
Her breath came back, her mind settled, and Brioni’s heart expanded just enough to let Ragnar’s words settle in and fill up the space that had been left empty for so long. His arms were firm, were safe, were all that existed as she finally let the tears fall.
She wanted to apologize for the secrets, to fume at the demon who had put her in this position, to beg for help, but nothing would line up in the right order, and for all Brioni’s endless talking, it was nice to finally be at a loss for words.
It seemed Ragnar understood, simply holding on, a hand gently stroking her back as the other kept her close.
They sat nestled into the warm straw with the veilhounds crowding in and Moar curling around the drayk at their side.
The horse chuffed from a few stalls over and two goats traded bleats, and despite the danger she knew was hovering so close, Brioni had perhaps never felt safer.
When the tears finally slowed, she eased herself back but not out of his hold. “No more sneaking,” she whispered. “And no more secrets.”
Ragnar waited with the patience she’d always wished someone would have.
The patience to sit through her endless rambling and then through her silence when the nonsense ran itself out.
He might have never moved from that spot in the hay if she never spoke again, but eventually the words got themselves unstuck, and the courage to tell him the truth of her wickedness pushed those words up and out.
“I made a mistake back in Ankerick. A big one.” Brioni’s stomach turned over, but it didn’t matter: he had to know.
“It started with a boy. My boyfriend. Sort of. His name was Ivan, and he was an Odevsky. It seemed romantic, I guess, because our families were supposed to hate each other—they fought over territory in Ankerick and had these competing schemes, but Ivan said he didn’t care about that.
He said he’d give it all up—his family, the coin, the power—because he loved me. ”
Brioni remembered what that love had felt like—like being drowned, but good—and realized she’d not felt that way once with Ragnar.
She wasn’t being slowly submerged into someone else, into what they wanted and how they felt, and she wasn’t being blinded and deafened by lies doused in faux sweetness.
Ragnar made the moon brighter and the birdsong louder. And he liked her as she was.
But then he didn’t know what she’d done. Yet.
“We met on accident at one of those parties I told you about. At least I thought it was an accident. I did my wine spilling thing, and then I went out on a balcony to hide, and there he was down on the street. It seemed like fate, but it’s not what the gods wanted.
Not the good ones anyway.” Brioni swallowed as she assuaged the desire to spiral, to talk about how it had just rained that evening, how her half sister locked the door back inside, how she slipped while climbing down.
“After that first night, we had meetings at the garden wall, and then I started sneaking out. Ivan said so many things that sounded right, especially when he said we should run away together.”
Ragnar waited while she went quiet again. His hand traced her spine as the story chased itself inside her brain. The planning, the excitement, misplacing her shoes while packing—important to share someday perhaps, but not now.
“Ivan took me to a cottage outside the city. When I saw the neighborhood, I thought I was going to love it, but it was even worse than living at my father’s.
I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t even allowed outside—for my safety, Ivan said.
He came and went whenever he wanted, and I was just supposed to wait.
He wouldn’t say for what, but eventually I found out. ”
Brioni was out of tears, sadness overcome by shame and the guilt of what came next. She wiped at her face and took a long, slow breath.
“My father eventually came after me. That was always the plan—Ivan left clues and spread rumors, and I didn’t even realize.
There were lackeys who worked for the Odevsky family waiting in all the surrounding cottages in that cute neighborhood.
I never thought for a minute that was who was inside.
I imagined families—people I would eventually befriend when things were safe and Ivan finally let me go outside.
I thought it was real, Ragnar.” She stared into his eyes and waited—waited for him to laugh, to call her stupid, to say she should have known.
The demon only gently knit his brow, and somewhere in the depth of his eyes’ glassy blackness there was a faint glow, like a single candle that burned just for her.
But that was too kind, and Brioni found a particularly interesting piece of hay to pick at beside her knee.
“I almost got my father killed.” It was the first time she ever really said it, and she steeled herself, but the barn didn’t collapse, a storm didn’t whip itself up outside, the world didn’t come to a terrifying or even mundane end, and most importantly, Ragnar said nothing, so she went on.
“He brought his best with him, and they had a bloody fight right on the dirt road outside the row of cottages. Even though it was a setup, my father’s crew wiped them out.
I begged for Ivan’s life, but he couldn’t keep up the ruse, not after everything.
He admitted to tricking me, to never loving me, to not even really liking me.
Even the knife to his throat didn’t stop him from calling me annoying.
Father killed him because that’s just what he did, you know?
He killed people. But the way he looked at me after?
I knew it wasn’t for me. He was humiliated.
“And that was the last straw. I was too much. Not worth the trouble. They locked me in my room until the slavers came to take me away for good.”
When she looked back up, she expected the flicker of yellow light in Ragnar’s eyes to be gone, snuffed with the truth that the woman who he’d been courting was pathetic and stupid. But the flame hadn’t gone out. In fact, it was even brighter.
How? How could he still look at her like that? Like she wasn’t wicked and spurious and undeserving of anything like love?
And then he smiled.
“Ragnar? Why are you…” She pointed at her mouth a mimicked him awkwardly—he never really smiled like that, like he had a fun little secret he couldn’t wait to share. That was Brioni’s thing, surely.
“The boyfriend,” Ragnar said with a vitriol his face didn’t betray. “He’s dead.”
“Ivan? Yeah…it was pretty gross.”
“Good. Though I’m sure he deserved worse for what he did to you. Unfortunately, it sounds like your father survived, but you caused him at least a little misery for the years of suffering he put you through.”
Brioni felt her eyes go wide as she flicked her gaze to the straw to search for something appropriate to say. But Ragnar caught her chin and lifted her head back up.
“They were unkind to you,” he said with a firmness.
“You say you weren’t worth the trouble—I say they weren’t.
They’re certainly not worth your tears. Or your worries.
” His thumb slid over her cheek. “No one will send you away from here like they did. The demons, the humans, your friends, they wouldn’t allow it.
I wouldn’t allow it. You must believe me. ”
Brioni’s heart for once did not race. Her palms didn’t sweat, and her mind was quiet. “I do.”
“That’s a relief,” he said with a hefty sigh. “Because I want confirmation from a true healer that this rune isn’t still making you ill, so you need to spend the night in the infirmary, and that’s going to feel a lot like I’m sending you away even though I’m not.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and crossed her arms, indignation warming her cheeks. “Ragnar, no!”
He tipped his head and eyed her in that way he knew now that she liked a little too much.
“Oh, okay, fine.” It was an easy enough thing to give in to, especially when she was already so tired, and maybe that meant she wasn’t entirely out of the woods yet after all. “You’re not going to stay with me there, are you?”
Ragnar’s eyes flicked to the shrouded rune with the hatred he would never show her. “I’m going to get rid of that.”
***
Brioni couldn’t sleep. She was lying on the soft, fluffy linens of an infirmary bed again, yellow lanterns glowing dimly overhead, and the chamber smelled of soothing herbs.
It should have been easy to drift off after the day she’d had—the admittance to Ragnar and then all of Balran’s poking and prodding—but sleep refused her.
Maybe that rune wasn’t so bad after all.
She huffed—of course it was bad. It was awful. And if Ragnar hadn’t found a way to destroy it yet, it was still out there in Heck with him.
Moar’s soft breathing filled up the silence of the thoughts she tried desperately not to have.
Ragnar had instructed the dog to watch over her when he dropped them off with Balran, promising to return in the morning.
But even after a long examination and a warm meal, morning was taking a blazes of a long time to get there.
Brioni drummed her fingers on her stomach and chewed her bottom lip.
She’d done more sleeping than she needed the past day—the past few weeks, really—and finally sat up, retrieving her satchel from the bedside table.
She needed to keep her fingers busy, but the package Ragnar had given her was sitting right on top of the parchment scraps meant for folding.
“Don’t forget about the sweets,” Ragnar had said just before he left, and still somehow the gift had slipped her mind again.